Yesterday AJ came home from his grandmother�s with a new piggy bank. It�s nothing special � a mottled bisque pig with �I love California� emblazoned on its side. It belonged to his uncle, who picked it up on a childhood vacation when the whole family piled into the station wagon and drove across the country. AJ was so excited about it, that he came running into the house to tell me about it, completely forgetting it in the car. His father rescued it and handed it to him on the stairs as we were pulling off his shoes. AJ hugged it, rubbed noses with its porcelain snout and bent to put it down. It clattered onto the wooden floor and broke neatly into three pieces. My husband and I froze, expecting the worst. Aj moaned briefly as I picked up the pieces. �I think I can fix this with some glue,� I suggested hopefully. AJ said, �Oh, OK.� And moved on to something else.

I really expected him to burst into tears. I think I was almost disappointed that he didn�t, that something he was so excited about had so little meaning in the long run. But for AJ, the pleasure was in something new, a state that even he knows can�t last. It�s just a bank after all.

A little while later we headed out to the car for a trip to the library. AJ tripped and fell on the driveway, not hard, but hard enough to bang his knee. He started to cry and I tried to get him to stop. Usually the most effective method to crying prevention is not to overreact. He tends to cry more if he sees me look worried. So I went over to AJ and said, �You�re okay. You don�t need to cry.�

Later that evening the irony hit me. My son breaks a cheap souvenir piggy bank and I expect him to cry about it, but when he actually injures himself, I expect him to suck it up. Somehow I have come to expect my boy to be stoic in the face of pain. It�s what being a boy is all about and it�s actually something he�s rather good at. He didn�t cry for a shot at the doctor�s office until he was two. I, on the other hand, was a wreck.

My reaction to the bank is a little more puzzling. It may be simply that I want him to appreciate the meaning behind gifts he receives. I want him to know how much his family cares about him. But I suspect it really has more to do with my own totemic relationship with some of my possessions. I am not particularly acquisitive and, despite the description of my desk a few weeks back, am actually something of a clutter-phobe. But I have a strong emotional attachment to many objects in my life. I think this is due to my years as a young child of moving around the globe. Every year or two (and occasionally more frequently) I was in a new house. My things were how I recognized my space. They represented continuity.

There are several things that I tote around with me everywhere, despite the fact that they bear no resemblance to my current tastes, which tend towards the spare and modern. One is a small, blue and white Wedgewood box, a gift from my grandmother after a visit to our home in London. At the time I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Every time we moved, I wrapped it carefully myself in tissue paper followed by newspaper and placed it inside a small box that I also wrapped in tissue paper and newspaper, placing it inside a larger box. Another object is a small statuette of �William the hippo. He is newer. I think I received him in my Christmas stocking about ten years ago. When I was in elementary school, my mother used to give art history lectures in classrooms. My favorite of her slides was a picture of the real William, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since them, we have occasionally exchanged William-related paraphernalia. She sent me a coloring book one year when I was in college. I sent her a pencil box William I found at the Oriental Institute one year. And then there�s my William, who�s intended to be a Christmas ornament, but is far too beatific to pack away every January.

Then there is my small, jade Buddha. He was purchased in a shop in Chicago�s Chinatown after a meal there with several of my friends from grad school. We were blowing off steam right before our comprehensive exams, and each purchased a good luck charm of some sort. My Buddha went to my comprehensives with me (and served me well, apparently) and now presides over my bathtub, where he�s become a favorite of AJ�s. Buddha was, in fact, one of AJ�s first words, much to his Catholic father�s dismay.

The most anomalous and most precious item, though, is probably my music box. Made of hand-painted porcelain, the music box depicts a young ballerina in a sort of kneeling arabesque position, her pony-tailed head tilted upwards, her arms stretched gracefully behind her. When her pedestal is wound, she turns while a theme from �Swan Lake� plays. She was a Christmas present the year I was three. I remember that Christmas vividly as pure magic. It seemed that my every whim had been magically granted. I had no idea how Santa could have found every single thing I had admired � A stuffed Snoopy nearly as large as myself, a white rabbit�s fur muff with a kitten head on top with frighteningly realistic glass eyes, and this music box.

For years, every night as I was going to sleep, my mother wound her up before she shut my door and left me in darkness. Her works are rusty now and her porcelain skin is rather grimy, but she�s still perfect. She�s sitting on my desk because I had thought about passing her on to my ballet-loving niece. But I found I wasn�t ready to let her go just yet. Perhaps I should take a lesson or two from AJ�s healthier association with objects. After all, it�s not the objects themselves that have meaning, but what they represent or recall.

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